Bill Seeks Castration for Molesters

A bill requiring the state to chemically castrate convicted child molesters will be heard in the Public Safety Committee of the California Assembly next week.

Introduced Wednesday by Assemblyman Bill Hoge (R-Pasadena), whose district covers portions of the east San Fernando Valley, the measure would require the state to use medication to create impotence in convicted child molesters who have been found guilty three times.

Without such so-called chemical castration, the bill says, the molesters would not be released from prison.

The bill allows the molesters to opt for surgical castration.

Hoge said he introduced the measure in part because of the case of Larry Don McQuay, a convicted child molester in Texas who has said he will sexually assault children again if he is not castrated.

But some experts on sex crimes have expressed skepticism that castration--chemical or surgical--will work against sex offenders. Rape, these experts say, is generally believed to be a crime of anger, violence and domination and is not necessarily connected to the hormone levels or basic sex drive of the offender.

Det. Bill Dworin, the officer in charge of the Sexually Exploited Child Unit of the Los Angeles Police Department, said the department has investigated the cases of two castrated molesters who struck repeatedly. One, he said, was surgically castrated and the other was given the drug Depo-Provera to reduce his testosterone levels.

“The urge was still there” to attack children, Dworin said.

Hoge’s bill, which has the support of the Pasadena-based Women’s Coalition, a victims’ rights organization headed by conservative Susan Carpenter MacMillan, is not the first castration bill to be introduced in the California Legislature.

In January 1993, Assemblyman B. T. Collins, who represented a suburb of Sacramento, introduced a similar measure. But Collins died before the bill reached committee and the bill was never considered.